E Commerce B2B Store Features can help you increase conversions. Selling to business customers is essentially the same as selling to consumers because both are just a person on another end of the wire looking at your store. There are some extra E Commerce B2B Store Features you can add to your B2B store to make the process easier and faster for your business customers.
* Note: I included links to some of our clients’ stores so you can see those features in action. Please do not place any test orders because those are live production stores.
14 E Commerce B2B Store Features
1) Quick order form
Out of all the E Commerce B2B Store Features, this feature will save time to your business customers who already know part numbers or SKUs of items to order. Excel-like interface allows fast order entry. You can see an example of this form working on www.huntoffice.ie store. An upgrade to this form would be [Upload Excel file] button under it to allow customers to directly upload excel file with the list of items and qty to order – but let’s start with a simple quick order form first.
2) “Save my credit card”
This option allows your customers to safely save credit card in their account without actually saving the card number itself. It’s called “Tokenization” and supported by several major payment gateways now. After credit card is saved in the account, this customer can choose to use it on the next order without entering the number again.
3) Auto Re-Order Products
Are there any E Commerce B2B Store Features that help residual sales/ YES! How about offering an option to automatically receive an item every week or month? A subscription type product which will be automatically reordered at a set interval and added to customer’s account. You can use tokenization to charge customer’s credit card for future orders or have an invoice emailed automatically for a payment by check.
4) “Save/share shopping cart” button
Are there any E Commerce B2B Store Features that enable saving the content of a shopping cart under a unique URL which can be sent for approval or final checkout? YES! Whoever clicks on that link will have all those items added to the shopping cart automatically, ready for checkout. This feature is super useful if your customer is a large business, with multiple staff members selecting products which have to be checked, approved and paid for by another user. Or, if you want a customer to save a link to the shopping cart’s contents and be able to re-open it later without logging in, or from another device. You can see an example of this feature in www.solidapollo.com store.
5) Send an order for approval
A variation of the above which fits a different order flow for a customer and allows an order to be placed in “Queued” status until another user logs in and approves it.
6) Business payment options
You will get more business if you help your established customers to manage cash flow by offering more payment options like Net 30, Net 60, and PO . You can allow such options per membership levels so new customers will see only credit card or phone payment methods, but you can enable more options for your regular customers.
7) Allow sales staff to order for a customer
Your sales people need an easy way to place an order while on the phone or in person with the customer. Adding a POS (Point-of-Sale) module to your store makes this a simple process. There are several POS modules available for Magento and X-cart store.
8) “Ask a question” button/link
You already have “Add to cart” button on every product page, but what if you sell high-priced or complex products and some customers are not ready to buy it right away. Do you have an easy way for them to connect with you or you reply on a small phone number in the footer or little link to “contact us” page somewhere in the header? Do not leave it to chance – add “Ask a question about this product” right on the product page. You can find an example of this feature in tmsoundproofing.com store.
9) “Request a quote” button
Similar to “ask a question” but applied to items where you do not want or can not display prices in the store (maybe due to manufacturer’s policy). You can see an example at huntoffice.co.uk
10) A better product search
Finding an exact item customer wants by one or two keywords is a complex process which made Google … well, Google. In B2B store which often has thousands or even hundreds of thousands of items, a search performance can make or break store’s growth. Probably the best search for X-cart we found and successfully use in many of our clients’ stores is CloudSearch because it returns the most relevant results instantly. Similar service for Magento 2 is offered by Algolia.com. In conclusion, if you have a budget for only one upgrade for your store – this is the one I would recommend. You can see an example of how it works in a real store here: www.palaydisplay.com
11) Spare parts/component finder
This feature is super useful if you sell spare parts or components for an assembly. How about showing a diagram of the unit or assembly with components shown so your customers can simply click on a component to order it? Check this client of ours: www.badboymowerparts.com – this is probably one of the coolest things I saw in any online store (well, maybe adding 3D here to rotate and zoom in would top it but we will add it later).
12) Multiple users on the same account
This is an important feature for B2B customers. The setup should be flexible, some customers will want users to see other users’ orders, some don’t. Consider how users will be added to an account; will users have different maximum order totals they can place? This feature is missed in many e-commerce stores and offering it will put you ahead of competition right away.
13) “Use My Own Shipping Account”
Allows customers to charge the shipping to their UPS or FedEx accounts or to arrange their own delivery.
14) Improve product photography, description, and specification
Out of all the E Commerce B2B Store Features, this one is important for any online store but especially if you sell the business or industrial products. Consider adding a detailed description, full specification, user manuals and guides for download in PDF format, installation and instructional videos, customer reviews with photos of this product in use, frequently asked questions and anything else related to this product. This does take some time to add all of that information but your customers will thank you with more orders and Google loves product pages like this. You can see a good example in this store: www.tmsoundproofing.com
I hope you found some of these E Commerce B2B Store Features useful. Most of those features are not expensive to implement or are offered as add-ons or extension; some will require more complex development and time invested on your part, so talk to your sales staff and your customers to see which features they want to see first and will use right away and start with those and discuss implementation with your current developer or we will be happy to help you – just drop us a note.
We will be adding other things to this list in the future so make sure to bookmark the page and subscribe to our newsletter to get more e-commerce news and tips delivered to you weekly.
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